-
Wake! The silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.
Up, lad, up! 'Tis late for lying;
Hear the drums of morning play ;
Hark, the empty highways crying
"Who'll beyond the hills away?"
from "Reveille"
by Alfred Edward Housman
GLEANER
Established 1901
Delaware Valley College of Science and Agriculture
Doylestown, Pa. 18901
Spring-Summer 1973
CO-EDITORS
Ray D. Blew '74
Ana Simon '75
Typing Staff
David Leininger
Howard Mandel
Ray D. Blew
Art Staff
Ana Simon
Howard Mandel
Layout & Design
Howard Mandel
Photography
Nick Pagerly
CONTRIBUTORS
Ana Simon '75
Mike Weller '75
Tom Yohe '75
Robert J. Palazzi '74
Ray D. Blew '74
P. Bowles
Howard Mandel '74
Drew Kotalic
Edward Biddle
Faculty Advisors
Faculty Contributions
Edward O'Brien, Jr.
Quotes from
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Alfred Edward Housman
Additional Art Work
Campus Press Service
Dr. George Keys Edward O'Brien, Jr.
The Gleaner is published during the scholastic year by the
students of Delaware Valley College of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
The Gleaner is a student publication, and the opinions expressed
within are not necessarily those of the Gleaner staff or adminis-
tration. Neither the college nor staff will assume responsibility for
plagiarism unknowingly occurring within.
A ruled life is led so sure — and sheltered pure.
On level ground you '11 not fall far.
But then, again, ne'er will you rise.
Ana Simon
THE CHESS AMBIVALENCE
BY EDWARD O'BRIEN, JR.
"Reputation is the only incentive I recognize."
— Paul Morphy
Ambivalence is defined as "the simultaneous attraction toward
and repulsion from an object, person, or action." To any sensitive
person who knows the dubious blessing of a fondness toward the
sport of chess, ambivalence is doubtless the most accurate
description of his attitude toward the royal game. The devoted
chess-player loves and despises chess for what it is (a fascinating
mental exercise and an exhausting time-killer); he loves it for what
it can do (it makes possible the creation of sensuous and abstract
beauty) and he despises it for what it can do to himself and others
— chess feeds vanity and the lust for domination over others.
A closer look at the ambivalence of this ancient game — some
would call it an art or a science — might be profitable for those
who would know why people "play at chesse", as a medieval
writer might put it.
First, the attractive side. The simple fact is that chess is fun.
And whatever is fun is wonderful; that is, full of wonders. Chess is
played because it is a keen, interesting, joyous escape into a
diversion. The fun is involved in the sharp matching of wits, of
mind against mind, which makes the contest, the game. Probably
the simplest and finest pleasure of chess consists in two good
friends enjoying a game together in a quiet, cozy room of a
comfortable house, with agreeable things accompanying the game,
such as wine, cheese and crackers, cigarettes, and soothing music.
A fire crackling in the fireplace and a dog padding about, rain
outside. I would say these moments are the very best the game has
to offer — chess in its most humanistic realization, happily devoid
of the fierce competition that coarsens tournament play. A
friendly game is one where the ugly spirit of competitive stress and
strain is dissipated by affection and where consequently a mood of
relaxation obtains. The most attractive side of chess is what may
be called its "moral" character, its ability to increase the
enjoyment of friendship.
Another attractive element of chess is its aesthetic character.
The beauty of the game is both sensuous and intellectual. The
sensuous beauty is provided by the pieces themselves (when well
carved) as they move over the checkered board — by the nimble
leaping of the knights (milk-white unicorns or black steeds
prancing), by the long side-ways sliding elusiveness of the bishops
(subtle churchmen), the straight-forward masculine sweep of the
rooks (solid castles of power), the feminine authority of the
queens, the quiet strength of the kings, the pedantic plodding of
the pawns. All the color and motley and pageantry of the high
middle ages is stylized in the 32-piece hierarchy waiting comfort-
ably at the start of a game. One imagines Camelot, boar-hunts,
tapestries, Merlin, flagons of ale, banners, French inscriptions —
Honi soit qui mal y pense — silver trumpets and golden lutes,
cathedrals, misty forests, Richard Coer-de-Lion, the castle of
Carnaervon. . .all the enchanting cornucopia of Christian civiliza-
tion. Chess is fun.
The intellectual beauty of the game is something else again,
being chiefly a matter of, I suppose, logic, invention, surprise, and
subtlety. The formal, abstract beauty that is created by the neat
technique or by the sacrificial combinations of great players is
wine to the intellect. For example, when in 1858 in New Orleans,
the young master Morphy (playing blindfolded!) sacrificed first his
rook, then his queen to launch a complex and decisive two-
bishops-and-pawn attack, he moved his pieces with an elegant,
stunning finesse that brought into being a masterpiece of logic and
imagination. In another splendid example of creative chess, against
Thompson in 1857 in New York, Morphy gave up a rook in order
to initiate a sparkling sequence of thirteen queen-and-knight
maneuvers that won his opponent's queen. The sheer natural
genius of the great Cuban master, Jose R. Capablanca, as he cut
through the appallingly complicated abysses of hypermodern chess
to achieve a simple lucid victory, is proverbial. The Russian master
Alekhine (apparently pronounced a\-yekk-in) once, in a simultane-
ous blindfold display, announced a checkmate in ten moves.
Botvinnik once adroitly calculated twenty-two moves ahead for a
checkmate. The result of such play is art and the delight that the
comtemplation of art will give. The great masters of the game, in
their ability to conceive combinations of astonishing intricacy, to
weave mating nets of fastidious complexity, are comparable to the
Mozarts and the Shelleys.
Despite this rather lofty claim for chess, there is something
about the game, or about man's attitude toward it, which is
disquieting. Across this faery realm of potent medieval magic, this
esoteric kingdom of logical beauty, there floats a disturbing
dissonance. . .the note of pride, vanity, or whatever. Also
triviality. Let us admit it at once — chess is a snobbish triviality.
Chess, or success at it, can easily make one a snob or a prig.
It seems very difficult to approach a game, whether lost or won,
in the right spirit, which would be a detachment suitable to what
is, or should be, only a game, a sport. I mean any particular game
one is playing. The important thing is to win at all costs. One must
not look bad; the logic of the thing, the game, is really secondary.
What is primary is to look good; artistry yields to ego. And then
one can use chess as a tool to achieve a certain kind of intellectual
domination over another person, which is really rather shameful or
even horrible when you think of it. The diabolical strain in chess
lies in its power to make easier anyone's already easy tendency to
worship that old unholy trinity — me, myself and I — by knocking
down someone else. Dr. Lasker, world champion from 1894 to
1921, knew what chess really is to serious players. It is a fight.
And when you fight you want to win; and when you win,
someone must lose. And you are so glad! Winning. The very
concept of winning is surely one of the queerest idols ever put up
for sale in Vanity Fair.
And if all this is true of amateur, casual chess, it is certainly
much more true of professional chess, of match and tournament
play. Here, the ego swells to some rather startling proportions.
Fischer has spoken warmly of that moment of victory when he
can feel the ego of his opponent being crushed (by his own). One
instance was during the crucial sixth match game against the
Armenian master Petrosian, in Buenos Aires. Alekhine is reported
to have smashed furniture in his hotel room after losing to the
beautiful play of Yates. The concern was with his own loss, not
with the fine performance of Yates. A German master whose name
I can't recall stood on a chair after a game and shouted "Why must
I lose to this idiot?"
Professional chess has always appeared to me as a world of
competitive lust where the only thing that matters is to be the
most powerful player on earth, or the strongest player in Russia,
or in New York State, etc., etc. Alekhine is supposed to have said,
upon entering another country — "I am Alekhine, chess champion
of the world." The biographies of famous chess-players make
lamentable reading. Chess appears to be "everything" to them.
Their idol is their own intellectual power. Domination and
oppression are the words that describe the ambience of chess at
the summit. And surprisingly, chess at these high levels of
competence is also such a physical matter. It is no longer a game.
Petrosian said, "Chess may start out by being an art or science, but
it ends up a physical endurance test." Imagine the exhausting
wizardry of playing, as Koltanowski did, 56 simultaneous blindfold
games, winning fifty !
One of the fundamental flaws of chess is that it is much too
difficult for a game, and therein lies its trap. It simply demands
too much of a man's time. You hear tales of players devoting
fantastic amounts of time to studying opening- and end-game
theory. There are countless opening gambits, each with bewilder-
ing variations and sub -variations. In Modern Chess Openings, a
volume of appalling size, sixty-five pages of small print are given
over to tracing the labyrinthine mazes of the Sicilian Defense
alone; over seventy for the Ruy Lopez. And this trivial Leviathan
has devoured substantial portions of men's lives. Dr. Johnson said
somewhere that nothing is too small for a man's attention, because
men are small creatures. I wonder what he would say of Modern
Chess Openings? Perhaps. . ."Depend upon it, sir, this book is
unworthy of a man's attention; it is an undertaking of utter
futility." And then, of course, even to glance at the book called
Basic Chess Endings is enough to discourage an Einstein. It seems
to contain at least ninety thousand pages of Arabic script, written
for the solemn digestion of a Martian computer. Chess is absurd.
Taken too seriously, chess is narrow, soul-constricting and
illusory. Within the confines of a board of sixty-four squares,
reality is reduced to the abstract and artificial relationships that
obtain among a few pieces of wood mystically endowed with
arbitrary powers. These powers and relationships have no exist-
ence or meaning apart from the mind of a chess-player, and only
exist there when it is attending to them. "Chess" is a cream-puff
kingdom ever on the verge of vanishing even when a-building in
the minds of its makers, and when not thought of, it is nothing.
To be caught in the shackles of nothingness is pathetic.
THE END
Now my brother dead
Daylight may wear my vengeance
Contemplating life
BJP
fejuJ Ah
Thursday at Night
Caught up in mandril wind
Sockets of sight I envisioned at depth
Till soon but one remained
Manifest religion embroidering a
Useless conception
Paths of detection, suited in beige
Diminishing reality. I beckon a phase
Immune to these corridors I'll waver
Revenge
That compound kiss of darkness
Heeding my direction till I am
Once again caste
Into oblivion
Most unregretfully
BJP
Nestled in the hollow of motherearth. . .her arms surround you
and comfort you,
You will subside all your pain and turmoiled soul
along with all her dominions. She will love you
to beyond your earthy thoughts.
P. Bowles
NOCTUIDAES,
HORROR IN AGRICULTURE
BY MIKE WELLER & TOM YOHE
Noctuids are by far the largest family in the Lepidoptera Order
of insects. The Lepidoptera Order consists of Butterfiles, Skippers
and Moths. They are also the most destructive insects of the
Kingdom. The adults vary greatly in size, shape and color, but it is
not the adult of this family that poses the most threat. It is the
larvae. The larva is the just-hatched, immature insect that
specializes in feeding. These larvae, after several weeks of feeding,
fall into a rest period called the Pupa stage in which their bodies
undergo great changes, and the adult (moth) emerges. The larva
and the adult are so different in appearance that one doesn't
realize the moth was once a worm destroying cabbage or another
valuable crop just a few months ago. The larvae are leaf feeders,
stem, root or fruit borers. They are unadorned with horns or other
conspicuous features. The adult functions chiefly for reproduc-
tion, although a few pollinate flowers.
Cutworms are evasive Noctuid larvae. They feed at night,
cutting plants crosswise at the stems, then hide in soil during the
day. In the home garden the cutworm can be physically controlled
by putting a paper collar around each plant. Another destructive
species is the corn earworm which feeds on corn tomatoes and
cotton. One way of keeping these insects under control is a
practice called "trap cropping". For example, plant a few rows of
corn in with your cotton crop and since the earworm prefers the
corn, it will leave the cotton. When the corn is infested with the
earworm, burn it to destroy them.
The cabbage looper feeds on basic vegetables such as cabbage,
lettuce and green beans. It is easily identified by its looping or
hunching motion of the body used for motivation. Pesticide
recommendations for these worms vary greatly from state to state
although Parathion, Sevin or Phosdrin are very commonly used
controls.
^w~^^«
«-«**«*<*V.
Stardrifter
And He owned the sky; castles with white marble floor.
And He flew so high; kids would come to him for more
'Cause He blew their minds; with ruptured raptured blues
And He'd walk on by; to see if someone had brought the news
And He slew their binds; broken past-part pages in the dust
And He Knew their lies; cataclysmic mechanisms turned to rust.
And He said:
Break on through, come over here
Lose your minds and lose your fears
Jump on in, swim around
Stay awhile, be a clown, be profound —
He cried:
Look at me! Sit down and listen
All I can be is what's been missing
Hold on tight, we're losing ground
The Temple crumbles, The Priests have drowned
And They owned the Sky; golden chariots by the score
And They flew so high; kids would come to them for more
And They blew their minds; with touch of atoms — springing spraying
And They'd walk on by; and laugh at those of people praying
And They slew their binds; cut the Umble, tied a knot
And They knew their lies; these They raped and then forgot.
And He Said:
Break on through, pass over here
Lose your minds and lose your fears
Jump on in, swim around
Stay awhile, be sure to look around
He Cried:
Look at me, with sparkle glisten
Look at me, I can hear you listen
Touch my hands and be forgiven
All I can be is what's been missing
Hold on tight, we're losing ground
The Temple crumbles, ALL THE PRIESTS HA VE DROWNED
Howard Mark Mandel
v#
J»^
G&N<-»
the ant i was about to smash
at me looked and said
save your hand stay thy lash
for i'll soon be dead
why shorten a life that's short enough
at me looked and said
you see we work ourselves to death
feeding queens in bed
my hand then quivered lowered itself
at me looked and sighed
off he scurried to his work
until the time he died
harbinger
You had an excuse then.
You "couldn't see straight. "
Then the world became a wart
on the tip of your nose
Look at it you cross-eyed fool!
Ray D. Blew
/ left the world today
And pondered a wooded dream
Feeling a sun I'd never seen
Flowers were winge'd
Rigid stares from a llama
Winding paths-
Footsteps
I knelt among the wheat
Numerous days
I fondled the sky
I tasted the loam
While opening my eyes.
BJP
*?z
Flickerwick
Candle beckon unto thyself
The lam'd heart of stranded soul
That's fallen by the icy stream.
Struggled o'er its cold stone walls
The fugitive broke its crimson prisons
And slashed away emotional chambers
Tearing through the snowbrush.
Now sought in nestling sloaf-cup slumber
The scarlet rivers of warmth and comfort
Once spoke of by the harbinger.
For just o'er the clearing
And in the nightwood
He lies quivering like a frozen quail
Bounded by the storm.
May your guardian flame
Guide him like a lodestar
And eternal power of inspiration
Open the wooded gates of deliverance
And carry him home.
Ray D. Blew
I'm going to die. . .
Someday,
When lilies are glowing
With exuberance up-turned
faces toward the sun.
I shall laugh among the
grasses.
Transcend the hollow
flowing river.
I shall stream peacefully
along
flowing — floating,
feeling all nature within
throughout and without me.
P. Bowles
I move in thought. . .
Of darkened shapes
and wine-paled light.
On moss-starred stones
in slipping streams
Through dust-filled rays
of filtered beams
I move in thought of you.
Ana Simon
■~ T> r-l
•= § !2. s w ^ s
Two pigeons resting peacefully atop
a high building with the sky as their
background and the clouds as their neighbors
P. Bowles
COLD DAY
by RAY BLEW
It was two in the afternoon, a cold day in March when I bopped
across that field from the post office with an envelope I had
already started making excuses for. I was done for the day and
glad of it. I pulled off my shoes, took a running dive for the bed
and threw the blankets up over my head. Mid-term grades I'd held
in my hand containing an "F" in Organic, my second time around.
What a drag, a "58", and I'd thought Dr. Erlenmeyer would have
cut me a break. I then proceeded to obliterate myself from the
picture, incorporating all conceivable exemptions from responsi-
bility. It was easy.
I must have spent the better part of an afternoon sulking about
my hard luck and assuring myself it wasn't my fault I got that
grade and that's what I'd tell my father in the morning.
Friday morning rolled around like half a worldly revolution and
I found myself packing my dirty socks, an envelope, and bagful of
programmed exonerations I carried like the answer to the
sixty-four dollar question.
Tootie-toot! Terror-toot! I stashed the goods in the back and
we were gone with the wind. With cruise control and couting at 80
on the Pa. T. P., the parley begins. . .
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"What hell, the grades." He didn't go for the verbal games.
I was just about to spit the non-virtue when I stopped and took
a good look at the man who'd asked me that same question six
times in the past two years. He was a strong and tough-looking big
man at forty-three and although I was an inch taller now, I still
looked up to him. When he laughed his forehead wrinkled like an
accordian and to shake his willing hand was like joyful reunion
with a number seven sandpaper. He'd made well of his life, but oh
there were times! There were times so bad I can still see Mom,
numbering sheets of waxed paper so we wouldn't use them more
than three times. He never said he got a bad break; his dreams had
snowballed into genuine authenticism. A perennial winner — an
achievement activationist. He'd conquered the mushroom and
executed defeat as he culminated that one simple serenade-like
septicemia that beckoned every man hum a tune in his own private
manner. . .success. Most never found the words, the phrase, the
tune, the melody. Nor had I. I had no excuses, gave none, and
thought little more of it as we travelled on, quietly, slightly
distracted by a faint euphoric toccata that kept me toe-tapping the
floorboard all the way home.
To share your sleep. . .
To reach your dreams and draw you in —
and out— and up— and far beyond.
To reach your dreams and be a part
and know and feel your spirit shapes,
and darkest deeps, and wanderings.
To be a dream and dream for you
and drift and sleep in love.
To play amid your crystal flashing silver space
To spin and glide and keep the night
and plunge on through. . .
To share your morning.
Ana Simon
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
American literature has lost one of its most prolific creators
with the recent death of novelist Pearl Buck. Mrs. Buck was
also a member of the Board of Trustees of Del-Val. She wrote
many citations for honorary degrees presented here, and
received a Dr. of Letters degree at the 1965 graduation where
she was also the main speaker.
Awarded both the Pulitzer Prize (1932) and the Nobel Prize
for Literature (1938), she was elected to membership in the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National
Institute of Arts and Letters.
Humanitarian in practice as well as thought, she founded
Welcome House, a non-profit organization designed to facili-
tate the care and adoption of American-born children of Asian
ancestry.
Born in West Virginia in 1892, she grew up in China,
acquiring an appreciation and respect for the Chinese people
that was revealed in her many tales of Chinese culture and life.
The Good Earth, published in 1931, gained its author
international acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize. Made into a movie,
the novel established Pearl Buck's reputation as a literary
great.
Creator of The Chinese Novel, My Several Worlds and The
Promise, she also authored numerous children's books and
contributed to various magazines, including Nation and the
Saturday Review of Literature.
"I remember when I was born. I do remember!
"Through eternity I slept,
"By its quiet waters swept,
"In its silence safely kept.
"All unknowing night or day, all unthinking there I lay,
"Suddenly by life compelled, I was free no longer held,
"Free to live or free to die, free to be that which am I.
"I remember when I was born. I do remember. "
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck, Trustee
we will miss thee
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